


Sweater Weather

by enigma731



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hoodies, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 19:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4888978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hoodie comes from a WalMart in rural Texas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweater Weather

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [KristinaDavidovna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/KristinaDavidovna) and [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander) for cheerleading and plot help!

 

1.

The hoodie comes from a WalMart in rural Texas.

Natasha won’t remember the name of the town later, but she’ll never forget the sight of Clint, in the civilian clothes he was supposed to wear in the field, covered in gelatinous green slime as he returns to the hotel room they’re using as a base during this mission. For a moment the image is so ridiculous that she thinks he must have encountered some new and particularly noxious weapons tech. But the sheepish look on his face tells her that’s not the case, tells her all she needs to know.

“What happened?” she asks, quirking an eyebrow, though she has a feeling she already knows.

“Nothing,” says Clint, as if he isn’t standing there about to drip goo onto the carpet.

“Right,” says Natasha, because there’s no way he actually believes she’ll let him get away with that explanation. “Then what didn’t happen?”

Clint levels his gaze with hers, stubbornly stares her down for a moment, then sighs. “It was an arrow. It kind of--got overly excited. Went too soon.”

“What kind of arrow?” she presses. It isn’t like Clint’s arrows to be faulty. Well, not the ones made by S.H.I.E.L.D.’s tech division, anyway. Which is why she’s pretty sure this isn’t one of those..

“Slime arrow,” he says sullenly. “Goo arrow? Don’t know, haven’t decided yet.”

“Not the ones you had on your workbench last weekend,” says Natasha. “Right? Because you definitely promised Coulson that you’d only be using the regulation ones from Tech from now on.”

“Nope,” he agrees, though the overly enthusiastic lilt in his voice is a dead giveaway. Clint might be rock solid in the field, but he’s always sucked at lying to her. “Funny how Tech had the exact same idea as me.”

“You’re hopeless,” Natasha tells him.

So that’s how she ends up making an emergency run to WalMart, with only an hour before they’re supposed to begin their surveillance assignment. Clint grumbles about the outfit when she hands it to him after his shower, but when she catches him napping in the hoodie a week later, she knows she’s done something right.

 

2.

As far as comparisons go, people have done a lot worse than to put Natasha and cats in the same sentence. They’re probably thinking of a lioness or a panther--something big, swift, and lethal. But really, Clint’s learned, the most feline thing about Natasha is her tendency to fall asleep in--and on--his possessions.

So he’s not exactly surprised when he gets home from a month-long assignment in Taipei and finds that his security system’s been disabled. He gave up on that just two months into his relationship with Natasha, learned quickly that she’d be able to hack anything he put in her way, and that he didn’t _want_ to, besides. She’s had her own access for years, has a knack for showing up when the place is feeling especially empty.

Clint smiles as he slips through the door, quietly because it’s well past midnight. His bones ache with the hollow exhaustion of jet lag, with the aftermath of a job gone half to hell. They’d managed to salvage the op in the end, but it’s been days since he’s had any familiar contact beyond the curt debrief he’s just completed.

The television is on, he notices as he slips through the door, the volume turned down so low that he can’t make out the words in the infomercial that’s playing, just recognizes the overly-exuberant tone. Natasha is curled up in a pile of blankets on the couch, blinks blearily as she stirs at his entrance.

“Just me,” Clint breathes, out of habit, though he knows by the looseness in her limbs that he hasn’t really startled her.

“I noticed.” She stands to greet him, pulling up the sleeves of the too-large hoodie he’s already stretched through regular wear.

“Comfortable?” Clint teases, cocking his head toward the couch, her nest of stolen blankets and her outfit of stolen clothes.

“Keeping it warm for you,” says Natasha, giving him a little smile.

Clint grins. “How thoughtful.”

He closes the distance between them, takes her hand and squeezes it gently before letting it go and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Natasha lets him pull her in, exhales slowly against his neck, the isolation and the uncertainty of the past few weeks melting away with the warmth of her body.

“You want it back?” she asks, her voice muffled in his shirt.

Clint shakes his head, slips a hand into one of the hoodie’s pockets and feels her shake with silent laughter. “Nah. I’m good like this.”

 

3.

Natasha grew up in the cold, feels like it resides in her blood sometimes, like she’s internalized it and become immune. Still, the blizzard that strikes four hours early is a complication their latest op really didn’t need. It’s all she can do to complete the rendezvous, retrieve the intel from the contact who’s insisted on meeting in middle-of-nowhere upstate New York.

There won’t be any extraction until at least the morning, she can tell as the sun goes down and the snow gets even thicker in the air. She’s been so focused on herself, on doing her job, that she’s all but lost track of Clint, running unneeded backup for her on a nearby rooftop. It isn’t until she’s sure the potential threat has passed that she realizes how treacherous his vantage point will have become in this weather, feels her stomach drop.

“Clint,” she says into the comm, trying to shield the unit from the wind with one hand as she turns toward the building where she saw him last.

“Here,” he calls out, no need for the comm after all as he drops from the edge of the roof to land in the snow. There’s something off about his stance, though, and the impact of the drop brings on a fit of coughing.

By the time they make it back to the hotel where they’ll have to wait for extraction, things have gone from bad to worse. Clint’s been ignoring a winter headcold for the better part of the past week, but his afternoon in the wind and snow seems to have pushed the bug into overdrive. He still won’t admit to it, but he can’t hide how rough his breathing’s gotten, or the chills that rock through his body.

“Get in the shower,” Natasha orders him, thinking that warm water and steam might help. But the thin walls just magnify the sound of his coughing, and she can’t shake the concern tugging at her chest, the way everything seems to be off-balance whenever he’s sick or injured.

She listens for a moment before fishing through his luggage, finding only a pair of sweatpants that he’s apparently intended to wear as pajamas. Typical Clint: at least he’s not planning to sleep in boxers or in nothing at all. Shaking her head, she opens her own bag, gets out the hoodie that’s ended up in her laundry most recently. It’s become a good luck token, almost, one of the few things that’s traveled around the world with them and lived to see another day. Natasha slips into the bathroom with the little stack of clothes, leaves them on the counter silently, though she’s sure Clint is aware of her presence even with the shower running.

The hotel’s selection of tea leaves a lot to be desired as far as she’s concerned, but there’s hot water a few bags of something herbal, so she decides that will just have to do. By the time Clint emerges from the bathroom, still shivering despite the warm water and the clothes she’s left, Natasha has the tea ready on the bedside table.

Clint tosses his used towel onto the chair in the corner, then theatrically face-plants into the mattress nearest him.

Natasha snorts, relieved to see that his sense of humor’s still intact. “Have a good shower?”

“Sure,” he says, voice muffled against the sheets. “Got a furnace I can crawl into now? Or maybe just a blow torch.”

“Sit up,” says Natasha, stepping out of her shoes and shedding her own snow-dampened outer layers. “And scoot over.”

“Yes ma’am,” says Clint, moving so that she can slip in beside him, wrap an arm around him before pressing the mug of tea into his hands.

He’s running a fever, she can tell, but she’s seen him come through far worse than this. For the next while they sit in silence, snow falling outside, and Natasha wonders when she became this person, the one he relies on for more than just tactical skill.

 

4.

Natasha dreams of falling. Not the serene floating that comes to her sometimes in sleep, but a breathless, voiceless plunge, the sickening crunch of a car careening over a cliff, glass exploding inward, stinging as the world lurches end over end.

She can’t seem to force air into her lungs, is choking on the sticky-hot-tang of her own blood. And suddenly it’s not the car that’s tumbling downward but her own body, pitching backward into a bottomless chasm, life draining away as she struggles to hold on.

She wakes coughing, heart pounding, pain radiating through her body. It’s more than just the nightmares, she realizes immediately--she’s missing time, at least a span of several hours, and every inch of her body aches. Her limbs feel almost too heavy to move. She’s in Medical, then, she realizes as she blinks the room into focus. Clint is sitting next to the bed, currently fumbling to pour water into a plastic cup from the pitcher on the side table.

“Hey,” he breathes, holding the cup out to her. His expression is equal parts relief and exhaustion, the crinkle marks pressed into his cheek telling her that he’s been asleep with his head on his arms.

Natasha lifts the cup to her lips with effort, takes a long swallow of the water before she speaks. “What happened?”

“You got shot,” says Clint, and she can feel his gaze searching her face. “You don’t remember?”

The reality of the memory hits her like a fresh bullet, slamming into her chest, stealing her breath again as the details come rushing back.

“Natasha,” Clint says sharply, his hand closing over hers, and only then does she realize that she’s nearly let the cup slip out of her fingers, her whole body trembling.

“Sorry,” she whispers, letting him take the cup back. “I do. Remember.”

He nods once, doesn’t ask her anything else. Instead he unzips the sweatshirt he’s wearing, wraps it around her shoulders, then follows it with his arms as he settles beside her on the bed, his heartbeat a steady comfort against her ear.

 

5.

Clint’s first impression of the Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. facility is that it’s cold. Not in temperature--though it’s that, too--but in the sterility of the subterranean space. It’s dark, even under the many fluorescent lights that have been installed, and the whole thing reminds him of the sort of makeshift shelters he slept under in his military days.

He knows why Fury wants him here--unobtrusive guard duty is one of his specialties, and ordinarily he wouldn’t mind. But he’s always been made for the outdoors, for sun and wind and the smell of warm grass. Spending god-knows-how-long underground is the last thing he wants to do, especially as a solo assignment. Not that he’s about to tell anyone that.

Even his quarters feel utilitarian and oddly oppressive, which is saying a lot. He isn’t usually the one to be bothered by whatever accommodations are provided, but this room makes the glorified closets he’s slept in on the Helicarrier look luxurious.

Sighing, Clint hauls his bag onto the thin mattress, pulls it open, then pauses. He hasn’t seen Natasha in weeks, their assignments on opposing schedules. But there, on top of the things he’s packed, is the hoodie she had last. He shouldn’t be surprised by her ability to do this sort of thing by now, but he is, as always.

Slowly, Clint picks up the hoodie and inhales the scent of Natasha’s perfume on the fabric, like she’s managed to reach across the miles and hand him a piece of home. Slipping into it, he smiles for the first time since arriving in New Mexico.

 

+1

Natasha’s face is still on the news when she arrives on Clint’s doorstep in New York. It takes him a moment to reconcile the sight of her on his security monitor with the image of her on his television screen, but he shakes himself and goes to answer the door, because this time she’s chosen not to let herself in.

“Thought you’d be in the wind by now,” says Clint, as she steps inside. She looks good, he thinks, despite everything he’s heard, everything he’s feared the past few days. She’s changed out of the suit he keeps seeing on the television, is wearing jeans, a smile, and the hoodie that’s become so stretched out over the years that it swallows her hands.

“And I didn’t think you’d be home,” she answers, shrugging. “But here we are.”

“Here we are,” he echoes, closing the door and turning to take her in again, feeling an odd edge of desperation mixed in with the relief, like she might be about to disappear again, the way she sometimes does. Her covers are gone, he knows, by her own design. “So--what now?”

“I don’t know,” says Natasha, then seems to think better of it. She _does_ have an answer, just hasn’t quite put it into words before this moment. “I thought--I might try being _me_ for awhile.”

Clint smiles slowly, the rest of the tension that’s been pulling at his shoulders all morning draining away. "I think I can help with that."

Natasha grins back at him, unzipping the hoodie and tossing it onto the couch before moving to kiss him warmly.


End file.
